The hype: “In the wake of huge power blackouts in 1999, an embarrassed and conciliatory John Rowe, chairman of Com Ed, said, ‘This will not cost ratepayers any more money….This is our problem. We’ll fix it ourselves.’” The facts: “However, two years later, during questioning at an ICC hearing, a company executive said that Rowe’s promise should not be viewed as ‘a literal commitment to the public but as a general conceptual statement for consumption and understanding in the media.’ With that explanation, Com Ed says a rate hike is justified” (CUB Voice, Winter, published by the Citizens Utility Board).
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News that hasn’t happened–yet. “Since July, a group of independent watchdogs, hired by the CHA at the behest of residents, has been nosing around to find out what happened during the past year’s relocation of hundreds of [public-housing] families,” writes Brian Rogal in the Chicago Reporter (January). The watchdogs are former U.S. attorney Thomas Sullivan and two associates from Jenner & Block. The four reports they’ve written after interviewing dozens of residents, advocates, CHA staff, and outside experts with firsthand knowledge of the relocation process “are believed to blast the CHA for moving too quickly. Some residents say the reports recommend that the agency temporarily halt demolition.” But nobody knows for sure, because the CHA views the watchdogs’ work as an “internal audit” that is “not open to public distribution.”
“Thirty-nine states apply water pollution permit fees so that the ‘polluter pays’ for the public costs of permitting facilities and monitoring and enforcing the Clean Water Act standards,” writes Howard Learner of the Environmental Law and Policy Center in an open letter to Governor Blagojevich (Illinois Issues, January). “Illinois doesn’t. This taxpayer subsidy–and another one for Clean Air Act permitting, monitoring and enforcement–costs the state millions of dollars each year.”
